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      How Khruangbin’s Sound Became the New Mood Music

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      The Texan trio’s vibes have spawned countless imitators, but their magic isn’t so easy to replicate.I worry that the word “vibes” is overused, but in what follows it is unavoidable: The band Khruangbin, a trio from Houston, has become so popular that there now exists an entire subgenre of music broadly known as “Khruangbin vibes.” If you have walked into a relatively hip coffee shop in a major or even minor city lately, you have probably encountered Khruangbin vibes. They’re marked by low-key, reverb-heavy, often guitar-forward instrumentals — music that’s groovy and pleasant, bewitchingly exotic yet comfortingly familiar, inoffensive and instantly graspable as existing within a particular sonic space. A vibe, as it were.Listen to this article, read by MacLeod AndrewsOpen this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.That such music has come to have a real toehold on the culture says as much about the way music is listened to today as the sound itself. Music now exists primarily within the stream, which is to say passively: We turn it on, like a faucet, and out pour songs representing some mood, or emotion, or any of the other words we used before we had “vibes.” Perhaps it’s an aura, like “chill.” Or a vague, evocative mind-set, like “always Sunday.” The tap turns and out pour songs we already liked, along with burbles of what is a little new and different yet fits in beautifully. This is the arrangement in which “Khruangbin vibes” excel. Such music is extremely slippery, genrewise. (Is it psychedelic lounge dub? Desert surf rock? The sound you hear inside a lava lamp?) As such, it pairs well with a huge span of music, across genres and eras; it has a kind of algorithmic inevitability to it. But this slipperiness also means that quite a lot of the bands now producing Khruangbin-vibesy music are entirely forgettable.Fortunately, being the three musicians who popularized a sound that so many others are chasing is not the same thing as chasing that sound yourself. To the members of Khruangbin — pronounced krung-bin, and featuring Laura Lee Ochoa on bass, Donald Johnson on drums and Mark Speer on guitar — that sound is not so much a goal as a result: It is what happens when they play music together. And while many others have tried, and are still trying, to identify and replicate what is so particular about Khruangbin’s sound, this is not really possible, because what happens among people when they play music together cannot really be quantified. Often, when it works, it is more — well, it’s more vibey than that.Khruangbin onstage in London in 2022.Jim Dyson/Getty ImagesSteve Christensen, Khruangbin’s longtime producer, explained it to me like this: Just about every day, he gets hit up on Instagram by folks asking how to achieve a particular Khruangbin sound. He responds, keeping no secrets, readily giving away everything, because Ochoa, Johnson and Speer have used pretty much the exact same setup for well over a decade now. Their gear and their instruments are simple and straightforward to the point of being borderline ascetic. (Ochoa, for example, has not changed the strings on her bass since 2010, when the group first formed.) When people write back to Christensen, which they often do, they will tell him that they now have all the same gear, and have learned all the songs perfectly, and still cannot get quite the same sound. “Well, I’m sorry,” he tells them, “but that’s just how they play.” Someone might copy Speer’s rig down to the last knob setting, and play his guitar melodies note for note, but without Ochoa and Johnson playing, too, the Khruangbin sound cannot be duplicated. “I know it sounds so simple,” Christensen says, “but if they’re not playing as a trio, it just doesn’t sound like KB.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why Did Matt Farley Put a Song About Me on Spotify?

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      I don’t want to make this all about me, but have you heard the song “Brett Martin, You a Nice Man, Yes”?I guess probably not. On Spotify, “Brett Martin, You a Nice Man, Yes” has not yet accumulated enough streams to even register a tally, despite an excessive number of plays in at least one household that I can personally confirm. Even I, the titular Nice Man, didn’t hear the 1 minute 14 second song until last summer, a full 11 years after it was uploaded by an artist credited as Papa Razzi and the Photogs. I like to think this is because of a heroic lack of vanity, though it may just be evidence of very poor search skills.Listen to this article, read by Eric Jason MartinOpen this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.When I did stumble on “Brett Martin, You a Nice Man, Yes,” I naturally assumed it was about a different, more famous Brett Martin: perhaps Brett Martin, the left-handed reliever who until recently played for the Texas Rangers; or Brett Martin, the legendary Australian squash player; or even Clara Brett Martin, the Canadian who in 1897 became the British Empire’s first female lawyer. Only when the singer began referencing details of stories that I made for public radio’s “This American Life” almost 20 years ago did I realize it actually was about me. The song ended, “I really like you/Will you be my friend?/Will you call me on the phone?” Then it gave a phone number, with a New Hampshire area code.So, I called.It’s possible that I dialed with outsize expectations. The author of this song, whoever he was, had been waiting 11 long years as his message in a bottle bobbed on the digital seas. Now, at long last, here I was! I spent serious time thinking about how to open the conversation, settling on what I imagined was something simple but iconic, on the order of “Dr. Livingstone, I presume.” After one ring, a male voice answered.I said: “This is Brett Martin. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to call.”The man had no idea who I was. More

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      Maurizio Pollini, Celebrated Pianist Who Defined Modernism, Dies at 82

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      His recordings of Beethoven and Chopin were hailed as classics, but his technical ability sometimes invited controversy.Maurizio Pollini, an Italian pianist of formidable intellectual powers whose unrivaled technique and unwavering interpretive integrity made him the modernist master of the instrument, died on Saturday morning in Milan. He was 82.His death, in a clinic, was announced by the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, where he performed frequently. The announcement did not specify a cause, but Mr. Pollini had been forced to cancel a concert at the Salzburg Festival in 2022 because of heart problems and had pulled out of a number of subsequent recitals.Mr. Pollini, who performed for more than half a century, was that rare pianist who compelled listeners to think deeply. He was an artist of rigor and reserve whose staunch assurance, uncompromising directness and steadfast dedication to his ideals were evidence of what his colleague Daniel Barenboim called “a very high ethical regard of music.”Whether he played Beethoven, Schumann or Stockhausen, Mr. Pollini was almost unmatched in his capabilities. He took perfect command of his instrument, a prowess that came across “as neither glib facility nor tedious heroic effort,” the critic Edward Said once wrote, but instead as a technique that “allows you to forget technique entirely.”There were, however, many listeners who could not forget that technique, and Mr. Pollini was long a subject of controversy. Detractors heard only cold objectivity, accusing him of being too distant, too efficient or too unyielding when compared with the great characters of the piano; one of his few equals in sheer ability, Sviatoslav Richter, privately complained of hearing Mr. Pollini play Chopin on the radio with “no poetry or delicacy (even if everything’s impeccably precise).”“It was not a very imaginative performance,” Harold Schonberg of The New York Times said in his review of Mr. Pollini’s Carnegie Hall debut in 1968, eight years after the pianist had stormed to victory in the sixth International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw — the first Westerner to do so, and at only 18. “With all his skill,” Mr. Schonberg continued, “Mr. Pollini failed to suggest that he was deeply involved in the music.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      7 Artists Shaping the Sound of 2024

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      Hear songs from Tanner Adell, Bizarrap and Young Miko, and more.Young Miko.Mauricio Duenas Castaneda/EPA, via ShutterstockDear listeners,It’s Jon — I’m filling in for Lindsay today for a very special installment of The Amplifier. By way of introduction, I’ve been a pop music critic at the Times for … around 15 years? (Let us not speak of that further.) I am also the host of Popcast, our weekly music podcast, and the co-host, with Joe Coscarelli, of Popcast (Deluxe), our YouTube conversation show. Like and subscribe!The primary reason I’ve enjoyed this job for so long is that it’s never boring. Surprise lurks around every corner and in every online wormhole. New artists with novel twists on old ideas — or, from time to time, wholly new ideas — emerge constantly. Pop is centerless and ambitious and forever mutating. If you think things are stagnant, you’re not listening hard enough.And so here’s a list of seven emerging artists who I think have real potential, from a range of genres and styles: People you might want to pay attention to in order to get a taste of what this year, and probably the coming ones too, will sound like.P.S. Or alternately, listen to what I was listening to when I compiled this list: one of the best posse cuts of 1994.Listen along while you read.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Apple Music Removes Ye’s “Vultures 1” Amid Distributor Dispute

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      On Thursday, the streaming platform took down “Vultures 1” after the LP’s distributor, Fuga, said its upload violated a service agreement. The album, which is on pace to hit No. 1, later returned to the service.Ye, the rapper, producer and provocateur formerly known as Kanye West, has what will likely be the No. 1 album on next week’s Billboard chart, with “Vultures 1.” But on Thursday, the LP briefly disappeared from Apple Music, one of the world’s top streaming platforms.Apple gave no explanation for the removal. But since its release, the album has been dogged by accusations of unauthorized samples, and earlier on Thursday an independent distribution outlet complained that its system had been used to release the music in violation of its service terms.“Vultures 1,” a joint release with the R&B singer Ty Dolla Sign, was set to be Ye’s comeback after a series of antisemitic remarks in 2022 made him a pariah in music and fashion — without a record label or booking agent, and with his lucrative partnership with Adidas canceled. In December, he apologized for those remarks in a social media post written in Hebrew.After listening events last week at arenas in Chicago and on Long Island — where young fans flocked to hear his new music, and some shrugged off his past controversies — Ye released the 16-track “Vultures 1” last Friday.It quickly became a hit at streaming platforms, despite problems like another brief disappearance online shortly after release, and accusations from Ozzy Osbourne and the estate of Donna Summer that songs on the album used those artists’ music without permission.One track, “Good (Don’t Die),” used a portion of Summer’s 1977 song “I Feel Love,” a pulsating classic of early electronic dance music. That track had been removed from Ye’s album on Spotify on Wednesday, according to reports.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Listening to Music Is Better When It’s a Conversation Among Friends

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      At group listening sessions, everybody gets a turn to speak by choosing a song.If you are the type of person who bides your time waiting for any conversation to pivot to music, who scrabbles through the dollar-record bins of junk shops or mudlarks around the streaming playlists of your favorite musicians hunting for rarities, you might be a Golden Ear. You almost certainly love music, but odds are, you are listening to it alone. The Golden Ears are devoted to listening to music together.Most weeks we gather in Tivoli, our little hamlet on the Hudson, to share songs. It began about 15 years ago, after a few music-minded friends moved up from the city. We schlepped book bags of precious vinyl and congregated around our hi-fi stereos. There would be casual chitchat, but once the needle descended, we would listen, quietly, to the end of each person’s carefully chosen song. This shared attentiveness — being social without talking, an intimate act usually reserved for married couples and Zen monks — felt precious. A surprising focus replaced the pressure to make conversation, like a shooting star silencing a cookout. At one of our first sessions, someone laid down a 45-r.p.m. record of Doris Troy’s “What’cha Gonna Do About It?”: one minute and 52 seconds of the purest, pulsing promise of American music, a jaunty, saucy, sashaying tiptoe of soul, almost impossible to not do the monkey to. When it ended, cheers erupted. By now we’re used to listening to music for one another, in a way that privileges adventure over taste.Certain norms have materialized. There is no set time limit between songs, and who gets to play what next is an open question (unless a member we call the Proctor is present, when a consistent order must be followed). Tracks are generally short, five minutes or less. No genre is verboten. Themes (“Songs About Songwriting,” “Beatles Adjacency,” “Songs You Want Played at Your Funeral”) emerge or don’t. Bold provocations and special prompts have led to an evolving nomenclature. For example, “the Sanborn” is the spinning of a song by an artist no one has heard of, while everyone pens a one-line review. There is plenty to exhort, and lots of talk between songs. For Golden Ears, talking about music is a sacred chance to kibitz over what we’ve stumbled upon in obtuse liner notes or an out-of-print autobiography. The pandemic was very hard on us. Of all the alonenesses the pandemic spawned, no longer listening with my friends was among the hardest. Once Dr. Fauci said we could, we went outside with Bluetooth speakers. Not wanting to bother anyone, we set up a fire pit deep in the woods and strung up lights. The first song we played there was Count Basie’s “Li’l Darlin’,” a tune so confident and leisurely that it felt as if Basie himself were leaning down from the bandstand, telling us in that dark moment that everything would be all right. We named the clearing after the song, and the music we play there trends toward emotional and contemplative uplift. Sitting by the fire after one of these gorgeous plays, someone will often break the silence with a sly, “Sorry, Officer!” — imagining a state trooper showing up to find a ring of middle-aged adults in Adirondack chairs listening to Jimmy Giuffre. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Marlena Shaw, Venerable Nightclub Chanteuse, Dies at 84

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      She sang jazz (with Count Basie, among others) and later funk and disco, frequently in intimate venues, where she regaled audiences with tales of old love affairs.Marlena Shaw, who cultivated a sultry stage presence and husky voice from the final echoes of the big-band era, to the go-go Playboy Clubs of the 1960s, to the rise of funk, to disco and finally to the modern cabaret circuit, died on Jan. 19. She was 84.Her daughter MarLa Bradshaw announced her death on social media but did not share any further details.Ms. Shaw first came to public notice in the mid-1960s, when she performed at Playboy Clubs around the country. Describing one of those performances in 1966, The Los Angeles Times labeled her a “pretty girl singer” but also called her “the surprise of the bill.” That same year, Jet magazine reported that “three record companies were waving contracts in her face” after a New York engagement.She signed with Cadet Records, which in 1967 released her recording of “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy,” a vocal version of the Joe Zawinul tune that had been a hit for Cannonball Adderley. It reached No. 58 on the Billboard pop chart and 33 on the R&B chart.It also got the attention of Count Basie, who invited Ms. Shaw to try out for a job singing with his band.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      That Spotify Daylist That Really ‘Gets’ You? It Was Written by A.I.

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      The music-streaming platform’s new “daylist” feature serves users three personalized playlists a day, with titles ranging from quirky to bewildering.Have your Sunday scaries ever given way to a “Nervous Ocean Monday Morning”? Does the weekend truly begin on Friday, or on a “Wild and Free Chaotic Thursday Afternoon”? How should one dress for a “Paranormal Dark Cabaret Evening”?Those odd strings of words are titles of “daylists,” a newish offering from the music-streaming giant Spotify. The feature provides users three new algorithmically generated playlists a day, each with an ultra-specific title that practically begs to be screencapped and posted.The often baffling titles have recently captured the attention of social media, propelling the service to fresh popularity about four months after its September debut. In post after post, users seem amused by the feature’s ability to see right through them.“Spotify called me out a little bit with this daylist,” one X user wrote of her own playlist. Its title: “Midwest Emo Flannel Tuesday Early Morning.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More